


when there's magic in the music

by gilligankane



Series: you can tell everybody this is your song [38]
Category: Wynonna Earp (TV)
Genre: 80's Music, F/F, Mixtape
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-16
Updated: 2018-09-16
Packaged: 2019-07-13 06:53:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 7,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16012592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gilligankane/pseuds/gilligankane
Summary: A collection of shorts, headcanons, and prompted works from the Mixtape 'verse - an EP, if you will.





	1. ain't gonna fly now, he's just takin' up space

**_June, 1984_ **

Nicole is sitting at the kitchen table, staring at her math homework and wondering if she can wish it away. She squeezes her eyes tight, counts to three,   but when she opens them again, her homework is still there, and  _worse_  - Nathan is pulling open the back screen door. 

Through the screen, she can see his brand new ‘84 Patterson PR-200 dropped carelessly in the driveway. She scowls. She’s still riding his old 1977 Cycle Pro Foiler.

Nathan goes to the refrigerator and pulls out the orange juice, folding back the spout and drinking straight from the carton. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, and burps.

“Gross.”

Nathan shrugs. He nods at her math book. “That’s the worst.”

She blinks at him. “What do you want?”

“I’m trying to be nice. Why do I have to want something?” Nathan asks. He pulls out a brown paper-wrapped rectangle from his jeans pocket. “In fact, I  _got_  you something.”

Nicole narrows her eyes. Bells and whistles start going off in the back of her head. She stares at him for a minute. “What for?”

Nathan shrugs again. “I can’t just get you something because you’re my sister?”

“No.”

She tries to remember the last time they bought each other gifts. It had to be when her dad was still home, when he took them out to the city and gave them money and told them to pick out something nice for each other. Nicole bought Nathan a Micronaut, the Baron Karza one he liked. Nathan got her the Simon game, but Wynonna broke it after she lost too many times in a row.

She looks at the present in his hand. It’s small, rectangular, and looks a lot like a cassette. She keeps looking at it, suspicious, but Nathan just sighs and slides it across the table. Nicole picks it up slowly, peeling back the brown bag wrapping carefully, until she sees the edge of the cassette case.

“It’s a new guy, Weird Al,” Nathan says. “He’s really good. All the kids at school are talking about him. He does this really good version of “Eye of the Tiger” that you’re gonna like,” Nathan promises. “I know how much you dig that song.”

She  _does_. She loves that song. Sometimes, Gus lets them put it on the jukebox as they close up and Waverly sings into the broom handle and Wynonna plays drums on the countertop and something in Nicole’s chest goes soft and loose.

Nicole turns the cassette over in her hands and scans the front. She doesn’t recognize the names of any of the songs - “Eat It” and “I Lost on Jeopardy” and  “King of Suede” - but she  _does_  recognize “Theme from Rocky”, even if she doesn’t know what XIII means. 

She looks up at Nathan with wide eyes. “You really got this for me?”

“I mean, you’re not the absolute worst,” Nathan says with a shrug. “And I knew you’d really like this one.”

Nicole looks down at the tape again. It’s not INXS’s  _The Swing_  cassette that she wanted, but it seems okay enough. Even if this Weird Al guy looks like someone Dee Snyder would make fun of. 

“Go. I know you want to listen to it.” Nathan opens the refrigerator again.

Nicole grins widely, and slams her math book closed, folding her worksheet inside of it. She darts through the living room and up the stairs, taking them two at a time. She drops her math book on her bed, rolls across it, and lands on her feet in front of her Panasonic RX-5030L boombox. Def Leppard’s Pyromania is in the deck. She takes it out and tucks it carefully into its case, placing it in its spot on the shelf.

She slides  _In 3D_  into the deck, side B up, and scans the listing again. The rest of the songs can wait; she wants to hear the Rocky song. She fast forwards through most of it, stopping the tape just as she hears the words “the boy could dance.” It must be luck - “Theme From Rocky XIII” is the next listed track.

The beginning opens the same - the drum beat and the synth. Nicole drops back onto her bed, arms behind her head, and taps her foot against the air to the beat.

“ _Rising up_ ,” she starts to sing. “ _Back on the streets.”_

The Weird Al guys sings something different.

“ _Fat and weak, what a disgrace_.”

Nicole sits up. “What?”

Nathan starts laughing from the doorway. She whips her head around to glare at him. He must have followed her up the stairs, and he’s laughing  at hernow, nearly doubled over.

“ _Guess the champ got too lazy. Ain’t gonna fly now, he’s just takin’ up space. Sold his gloves, threw his eggs down the drain_ ,” Weird Al sings.

“No, this is wrong,” Nicole says. She shakes her head. “That’s not how the song goes.”

Nathan is on one knee now, laughing still. Nicole feels a burst of anger in her chest. She listens, horrified, through the next verse, and Nathan just keeps pointing at her and laughing. 

“Your  _face_ ,” he manages between breaths. 

She pulls back in horror when he starts the bridge. 

“ _Try the rye or the kaiser - they’re on special tonight. If you want, you can have an appetizer. You might like our salami and the liver’s all right, and they’d really go well with the rye, or the kaiser_.”

She slams her hand down on the stop button, ejecting the cassette so fast that she’s sure she ripped the tape.

“He-he  _ruined_  it,” she hisses. Her hands shake and she thinks, just for a minute, about unspooling the tape and tossing it into the garbage can, but puts it back into its case instead. “This is…” She swallows down the rising tide of anger and tears in her throat. “This is the worst thing to happen to music.  _Ever_.”

Nathan falls on his back and laughs.

On the night before he marries Mercedes, Nathan gives her a new copy of Weird Al’s  _In 3D_  and she chucks it at his head.


	2. i'll be awake and i'll be with you/i, i, i, wake up and wonder

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nicole's feelings on **Cyndi Lauper’s _She’s So Unusual_** and **Talking Heads’ _Speaking in Tongues_**.

**Cyndi Lauper’s** _ **She’s So Unusual**  - _which, of course, Nicole  _didn’t_  buy; her mom picked it up after a lady at work recommended it, but it’s  _music_  and Nicole does love music (though, she only loves 4 songs).

  * _All Through The Night_  - Nicole doesn’t listen to this song, not really, until after Waverly kisses her for the first time. And then after that, in space between being afraid of what kissing means and doing it more, Nicole  _consumes_  music, trying to find something do describe this ache within her. And tucked away inside the living room bookcase is her mom’s old Cyndi Lauper tape and this song comes on and Nicole’s whole world boils down to:  _“All through the night, I’ll be awake and I’ll be with you. All through the night this precious time when time is new. Oh, all through the night today, knowing that we feel the same without saying.”_
  * _Time After Time_  - this song  _speaks_  to Nicole. She finds it at the same time as she finds  _All Through The Night_ and she puts it on a mixtape she never gives to Waverly - too chicken to let her know how she  _really_  feels. Instead, she doesn’t turn it off when it comes on, and when Wynonna gives her a hard time, she teaches Wynonna the words instead. They both sing it at the top of their lungs.
  * _Witness_  - Nicole doesn’t think she actually  _likes_  this song. But every time it comes on, she pictures her mom, barefoot in the kitchen with a soup spoon as a microphone, singing this at the top of her lungs while looking at that one family picture they still keep on the refrigerator - the Polaroid of her, Nathan, her mom, and her dad, in 1979, when they piled into her dad’s 1972 Ford LTD 4-door and drove to Niagara Falls. She thinks  _that_  is what she likes - the way her mom sings at her dad like she’s finally moving on.
  * _Girls Just Want To Have Fun_  - Nicole doesn’t actually like this song until Hayley is older, walking around with Nathan’s old walkman attached to her overalls, barely able to run, but wiggling her best and butchering the lines to this song in the way only a four year old can. 



**Talking Heads’** _ **Speaking in Tongues**  - _this belongs to Nathan, actually, but he  _kills_  this tape; he plays it so many times, loudly, on his Panasonic RX-FT600 Dual Deck Boombox, that Nicole takes it from his room and definitely intends on unspooling it, but she listens to it first - a sort of  _Last Rites_  ritual, and she… doesn’t hate it? At least, she doesn’t hate a few of them. 

  * _Burning Down The House -_ Nicole likes to  _dance_  to this song. She likes to throw her arms up in the arm and stomp around and she likes the way it makes Wynonna and Waverly laugh, after Curtis dies. Sometimes, she puts it on and makes her voice real low, to match David Bryne, and Wynonna always,  _always_  laughs and nothing  _hurts_  for exactly four minutes and one second.
  * _This Must Be The Place (Niave Melody)_  - This is one of the songs Nicole tries to make the ‘Official Song of the Sekrit Hideout’ when they vote on their favorites. It makes it to the final round, but then Wynonna and Waverly gang up on her and 
  * _Pull Up The Roots_  - Nicole wants it to be clear that Bobo likes this song. No, no. He  _loves_  this song. And he sings it  **loudly** , in the kitchen, in between Supertramp and the B-52′s. He sings it so loudly that Nicole will convince Curtis to turn down the jukebox and she and Wynonna will play the air guitars and Waverly tries her best to match Chris Frantz using the countertops.




	3. far across the distance (and spaces between us)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There was room on that door...

**1997**

Waverly (25) loves Leonardo DiCaprio. He’s on her “Would I Ever? Yes I Would” list. (Nicole has Alyssa Milano on hers, because some dreams never die.) At a movie night, Doc picked  _The Quick and the Dead_  - Sharon Stone is right up his (and Wynonna’s) alley - and Waverly Earp went a little starstruck over the kid playing The Kid. When he ended up being Romeo in  _Baz Lurhman’s Romeo + Juliet_  the next year, Waverly convinced (what? like it was hard?) Chrissy and Rosita to drive to the city to see it on the night it came out. 

> Note: Waverly doesn’t subscribe to the idea that  _Romeo and Juliet_  is a romance. It’s a goddamn tragedy and fifteen-year-old girls need to stop wishing for their very own Romeo. There is a very long list of reasons  _why,_ but honestly, she just likes Leonardo DiCaprio in a Hawaiian shirt. It’s not  _his_  fault the original Romeo is such a creep.

Then she found out he was in  _Titanic_  and she immediately demanded Nicole go with her and see it - it could be her Christmas present. Waverly crafted a list of reasoning, including, but not limited to: implementing it in her curriculum for her seniors [she already had an essay topic in mind:  _compare and contrast Titanic (1997) to the readings of the RMS Titanic we have read in class]; and_ Kate Winslet is in it (remember, Nicole. She was in _A Kid In King Arthur’s Court (1995)_ and you liked that movie). 

Nicole (27) can’t argue; she  _did_  love that movie.

To make a long story short: Nicole negotiated and agreed they could see the movie, but only if Waverly promised to keep her hands off Nicole’s Orange Crush for the  _entire_  movie. Waverly agreed before she realized the movie was 3 hours and 15 minutes long. 

When they left the theater, Waverly spent the whole car ride back to Purgatory, gushing over how romantic the whole thing is. She talked about how he saved her from jumping; how he taught her to  _feel;_  how they loved each other so much; how it didn’t matter about their past lives, they were living in the now.

“She took his last name,” Waverly said, sighing dreamily as they passed the ‘Welcome To Purgatory’ sign. 

“Illegal,” Nicole fired back. “A name change like that without the proper paperwork is illegal.” 

Waverly scowled at her. “It was  _romantic_. He died for her.”

“Yeah, about that,” Nicole said, taking a deep breath. “She should have moved over. There was room. On that door, I mean. If she had just moved over, they could have both survived. But  _no_. She couldn’t move an inch to save his life.”

They argued for the next fifteen minutes - through parking the car and through taking Styx out to use the bathroom and through cleaning up the kitchen and through getting ready for bed. When they got into bed, Waverly huffed and rolled away and Nicole laid there, staring at the ceiling, unwilling to give in - she’s right, the door  _is_  big enough and there’s nothing romantic about freezing to death - but hating the tension in Waverly’s shoulders and the foot of space between them.

Just before she fell asleep, she felt Waverly’s hand in hers. Their fingers laced easily and Nicole’s chest loosened.

They never watch Titanic together ever again.


	4. i pity the fool

**1984**

Champ Hardy sees this issue on the stands - maybe at the drugstore or most likely at The Forge and buys it. He knows Mr. T -  _everyone_ knows Mr. T. The next day, he comes into school and it’s January, but he rips off his puffy winter coat, and is like,  _check me out._ He’s totally ripped the sleeves off his jean jacket and convinced his mom to sew a few bandanas into the chest of it for some color. (Stephanie Jones loses her mind.)

Waverly shrugs and says that it needs some bedazzling, but, “it’s, like, kind of grody.” 

Nicole looks up as Waverly says this and slowly puts the scissors in her hand down.  _Maybe I won’t cut my jean jacket then,_ she thinks.


	5. i'm the man on the scene

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From the prompt: "If you die, I’m gonna kill you."

**January, 1990**

Nicole reaches up to adjust her collar, pinching the starched fabric between her fingers to tighten the crease. She frowns at her reflection in the mirror, turning her shoulders back and forth. “Is this shirt too bulky?”

Waverly looks up from the  _Rolling Stone_  she’s reading - Tom Cruise on the cover. “What?”

Nicole pulls at the polyester uniform shirt. “Is this shirt too bulky? I have an undershirt on but I can take it off? I don’t want to look like a tire on my first day.”

Waverly tips her head to the side and purses her lips. “It’s not too bulky. You look totally bunk.” She wiggles her eyebrows suggestively. “Like a total babe.”

“Waverly,” Nicole admonishes. “Not while I have my uniform on.” She looks back at her reflection and smoothes her hands down the front of her shirt. “I’m a professional.”

“A professional dweeb,” Wynonna says as she comes into the room. “And did you know that it’s, like, ass o’clock in the morning? And getting up this early totally messes with my life plans?”

“You have life plans?” Waverly asks.

Wynonna lays down on Nicole’s bed and stretches her legs out, dropping them into Waverly’s lap. Waverly shoves them away and Wynonna waits a minute before putting them back. “Duh. My plans are to sleep late, ride my motorcycle as much as I can, and someday have sex in the back of a 1976 Oldsmobile Cutlass.”

Nicole opens her mouth and then closes it with a frown. “Why a Cutlass?”

“Big backseats,” Wynonna says, winking.

Waverly rolls up the  _Rolling Stone_  and brings it down on Wynonna’s forehead, ignoring Wynonna’s shout of surprise and Nicole’s groan of protest. She puts the magazine down on Nicole’s desk and smoothes it out flat, giving Nicole a pointed glare. She steps in front of Nicole, backing her away from the mirror, and reaches up to bat Nicole’s hands away from her collar. 

The backs of her hands are hot against Nicole’s neck. She tugs on the polyester and steps back, giving Nicole a once-over. “You look very professional,” she says, smiling.

Nicole pushes her chest out a little. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Waverly says quietly.

“ _Barf_ ,” Wynonna says from the bed.

Waverly winds her hands into the waistband of Nicole’s uniform pants, so much starch on them that they barely move. “Now,” she starts, lowering her voice. “You listen to me, Nicole Haught, and you listen good.”

Nicole nods wordlessly.

“Today is a really important day for you. And I am so,  _so_  proud of you.” Waverly smiles softly and brushes a finger across Nicole’s jaw. “But I  _swear to god_ ,” she continues, her voice dropping into that low, demanding growl that she uses when she’s trying to scare Nicole into something.

She used it when Nicole wanted to give up teaching her how to ride a bike, after the second time she nearly hit Curtis’ truck. She used it when she made Nicole swear to never lie again -  _I didn’t lie_ , Nicole had protested.  _I just didn’t tell you about Shae_. Waverly had glared at her.  _That’s the same thing_. She used it when she Champ cried and cried about someone layering bologna over his truck and Nicole wouldn’t admit to doing it.

“I swear to god,” Waverly repeats. “If you go out there and you die, I’m gonna kill you. Do you hear me?”

Nicole scoffs and rolls her eyes, but Waverly’s hand tightens on her collar, wrinkling the fabric.

“I’m serious, Nicole,” Waverly says. Her eyes start to shine a little, wet at the corners.

“Baby,” Nicole says softly, glancing at Wynonna doing a terrible job of pretending not to pay attention. She slides a finger under Waverly’s chin and tips her head up so their eyes meet. “Baby, it’s  _Purgatory_. Unless, like, a cow comes and sits on me, I’ll be fine.”

Waverly shakes her head. “No. We have crime, you know that. And tensions are high between the Revenants and the Blue Devils lately, and-”

“I’ll be fine,” Nicole says firmly. “Nothing is going to happen to me. Ever. I promise.” She gives a small laugh. “You know, I bet I’ll never even, like, come close to dying. It’s  _Purgatory_ , Waves. We’re the waiting place.” She leans in and kisses Waverly lightly, ignoring Wynonna making gagging noises again. You’ll see.”


	6. stand back (stand back)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From the prompt: "Wanna bet?"

**May, 1983**

“You wanna bet?” Nicole asks. She stands on top of the rickety panel and puffs out her chest, her hands on her hips.  _Not Superman_ , she thinks quickly. She picks up the stick she had Wynonna throw her and stretches out her arm.  _He-Man_.  _That’s better_.

Wynonna scoffs below her and folds her arms over her chest. “Yeah, I do. Because you’re a  _noob_  who won’t jump.”

“Yes, I will,” Nicole says firmly.

“Yeah,” Waverly echoes.

Nicole feels her cheeks flare but she smiles at Waverly.

Wynonna lets out a sharp laugh. “I hope you don’t grow too tall, being so scared of heights.”

Nicole scowls. “I’m not scared of heights. I climbed up here, didn’t I?”

“Oh yeah?” Wynonna says. “Then look down.”

“No,” Nicole says quickly. “Because I don’t want to.”

“Because you’re scared,” Wynonna fires back.

Waverly picks up a maple leaf seed with the helicopter wings and chucks it at Wynonna, but it flutters off and lands before it hits her. “She is not.”

“She is too,” Wynonna says.

“Is not.”

“Is _too.”_

_“_ Is no-”

Nicole sticks her fingers into her mouth and blows hard, whistling over Wynonna and Waverly. “I’m not scared,” she says again.

Wynonna moves closer to the big tree they claimed as their own secret hideout. She cranes her neck back, eyes scanning the five meters from the ground to the wooden panel Curtis nailed up there for them. Nicole hadn’t wanted to climb up and help him hold the board when he did it, saying that she just got a new shirt and her mom would  _spaz_  if she got it dirty. Instead, Wynonna went up with him and wrapped her legs around a thin branch and swung upside down, waving a hammer, until Curtis told her he’d throw out her Motley Crüe tape if she didn’t knock it off. 

“Wanna bet?” Wynonna parrots.

She’s  _not_  afraid of heights, not really. But it’s nearly the start of summer and it’s the rainy season. It poured last night, loud thunder cracking against the windows and the bright lightning snapping in the air. She’d crawled under Wynonna’s covers and she read Wynonna an old copy of  _Rolling Stone_  until they fell asleep, a glossy Harrison Ford stuck between them.

The puddles left behind could swallow her bicycle whole and she barely made it out to the woods without muddying up her boots. Right underneath the tree is a puddle she almost couldn’t jump over on her way  _up_  the tree; there’s no way she can jump  _out_  enough to miss it on the way down.

“I’ll give you my  _Desolation Angels_  tape if you do it,” Wynonna goads.

Nicole narrows her eyes. “That has ‘Rock N’ Roll Fantasy’ on it,” she says slowly.

Wynonna nods. “You’re always asking if you can borrow it. Well, you can  _have it_ , if you jump.”

Nicole peers down over the edge of the panel and gulps. That mud puddle looks bigger from up here. She’d had to go at least two meters out and there’s not a lot of room to back up and leap.  _But Desolation Angels_ , a voice in her head says. It sounds like Waverly.

“You don’t have to do this, Nicole,” Waverly calls up.

Nicole frowns. “You don’t think I can?”

“I don’t not think you can,” Waverly says, frowning back at her.

Nicole presses her mouth into a thin line. “Deal,” she says to Wynonna. “But no take backs.”

“No take backs,” Wynonna promises.

“Nicole,” Waverly says. “Come on.”

Nicole ignores her, looking down at the mud puddle again. “I’ll show you,” she mutters. She backs up until her heels slip off the other side of the panel, she takes a deep breath, and she sprints forward, jumping up and out.

For a moment, she  _soars_. 

The wind w _hooshes_  hard in her ears and stings her eyes but she can see herself laying on the McCreadys’ lawn listening to “Rock N’ Roll Fantasy” with Waverly and Wynonna next to hear. She can hear “Fly Like An Eagle” somewhere in the back of her head, the drums and slide guitar. She can hear Waverly cheering her name and Wynonna swearing now that’s she’s one Bad Company tape down. 

The next thing she hears is the ugly  _squelch_  of her feet in the mud and Waverly’s horrified gasp. 

She can feel mud speckled up her arms and she slams her eyes closed so she doesn’t have to look at the splotches on her just-ironed jeans. She can feel globs of it sliding down between her socks and her feet and, for a moment, she thinks she’s going to be sick. 

Slowly, she opens one eye and then the other.

“Holy  _tits_ ,” Wynonna whispers.

“Language,” Waverly scolds.

“I’m gonna be sick,” Nicole says out loud.

Wynonna’s eyes widen and she picks up her bicycle, throwing a leg over the frame. “I have to go home. I need to get Gus’s Polaroid so I can take a picture of this.” She turns and starts pedaling hard, leaves kicking up under her tire.

“ _Wynonna!”_ Nicole shouts. Her shoulders slump. “Bring my tape! And more clothes!”

“Wow,” Waverly breathes out. Nicole looks at her. Her eyes are wide but bright and she’s smiling widely. At Nicole.  _Because of Nicole_. 

Nicole pushes down the ache in her stomach and focuses on  _that_  instead.


	7. baby, you ain't missing nothing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From the prompt: "Wait a minute. Are you jealous?”

**October, 1982**

“Waverly gets a turn next,” Curtis reminds them, standing in the doorway to the living room.

Waverly bounces at his side, clutching the cassette tape she wants to listen to in her hands. She looks up at Curtis and grins. “The whole tape, right?”

Curtis shakes his head. “One side,” he reminds her. “And then it’s Wynonna’s turn again.” He moves his hands in a circle. “Like a cycle.”

“We learned about water cycles last week,” Waverly says. “Did you know that water can be, like, five different things.”

“No it can’t, you dweeb. It’s  _water_ ,” Wynonna says over the song changing.

“ _No_ ,” Waverly says. She puts a hand on her hip, stomping her foot. “It can be water, and vapor, and ice, and-”

Wynonna groans loudly. “ _Bor-ing_ ,” she sings.

Nicole ignores them both, trying to focus on the tape she picked - her old  _Infinity_  Journey cassette. She only saw a flash of the cover but she recognizes that red background anywhere. It’s her brand new  _Toto IV_  cassette, the one she hasn’t stopped talking about or playing or carrying around.

The brand new  _Toto IV_  cassette that Nicole hates.

There are a lot of things she hates right now. The color pink, “Whip It!”, her dad, Tucker Gardner, and Cabbage Patch Kids.

“Be nice,” Curtis warns, a finger pointed in Wynonna’s direction. He looks over at Nicole. “Help her with that?” he asks.

Nicole sits up a little bit, nodding surely. “‘Course I will.”

He pats her on the top of the head as he passes. “You always do.”

The last song on Side A of her tape ends with a loud click and Waverly jumps up and down.

“My turn, my turn,” she sings.

Wynonna groans and gets up off the floor, knocking her knee on the coffee table. “Shit,” she hisses.

“Language,” Waverly says sharply.

Wynonna sticks her tongue out at Waverly. “Oh, can it.” She looks at Nicole. “I’m getting an Orange Crush. Do you want one?”

“I want one,” Waverly says.

“I wasn’t asking you,” Wynonna fires back.

Waverly takes a deep breath like she does right before she’s about to holler for Gus or Curtis and Wynonna scrambles forward, clamping a hand down over her mouth. “ _Fine_ ,” Wynonna hisses. “Brat.”

Nicole takes her time pulling the cassette out of the deck. She crowds the stereo, slowly opening the case and sliding the tape in twice before she’s satisfied with the way its sitting.

“Come on, come on,” Waverly pushes.

Nicole looks over her shoulder and scowls. “Cool your jets.”

Waverly frowns at her, her head tilted to one side. “What’s your beef?”

“What?” Nicole asks, looking back down at her tape. She jumps when Waverly appears at her side.

Waverly pokes her in the forehead. “You’re all pinchy.”

Nicole swats at Waverly’s hand. “Am not.”

“Are to.”

“Am not.”

“You are,” Waverly says firmly. She looks at the empty tape deck. “Is it my turn now? You’re hogging the machine.”

Nicole scoffs. “Whatever. Play your stupid tape.”

“I like ‘Africa’,” Waverly says defensively.

“I like ‘Africa’,” Nicole mocks.

Waverly frowns and puts  _Toto IV_  down. “Hey.”

“It’s a  _stupid_  song on a  _stupid_  album,” Nicole says, raising her voice. The plastic case in her hand cuts into her palm a little.

Waverly’s frown spreads deeper across her forehead. “I thought you  _liked_  ‘Africa’,” she says slowly. “When it came out you wouldn’t stop playing it.”

“Well now I think it’s stupid,” Nicole says. “It’s more stupid than having to make a boys and girls line at school.” She can feel her stomach tightening. “It’s more stupid than Nathan getting to take longer showers than me because he’s older.”

She knows she’s saying too much now and it makes her mad. Waverly’s eyes are wide and Nicole’s hands are shaking and she shoves them deep into the pockets of her jeans. Her mouth won’t stop, though, lips dry and sticking as she talks. They come streaming out of her mouth in a hot rush of anger and truth. “It’s more stupid than Wynonna’s crush on John Henry just because he’s got that stupid cowboy hat. It’s more stupid than-”

“Wait a minute,” Waverly says. “Are you  _jealous_?”

Nicole feels her face flush. “ _No_ ,” she spits. She turns away from the stereo and tries to step around Waverly. Waverly slides to the side, getting in her way again. “Move, Waves.”

Waverly shakes her head. She peers at Nicole, eyes narrowed. “You are.”

Nicole can feel the knot in her stomach tightening and her eyes start to burn. “Can it,” she mutters, not meaning it.

“What’s wrong?” Waverly asks. She steps closer and her hand drifts towards Nicole’s arm.

Nicole’s eyes go to that tape, still in Waverly’s other hand. “I hate that song.”

“You  _love_  this song,” Waverly insists. “You sang it all the time. We can’t play it at school anymore because you and Wynonna almost made Ms. Michaels, you sang it so much. You told me you were going to get the tape, because your dad-” She stops, eyes narrowing into thin slits. “What did he do?”

“He  _didn’t_ ,” Nicole grumbles. “He was supposed to send me the tape and he  _didn’t_.” Her voice starts to build and the words are pushing up out of her throat quickly. “He called and told me maybe the mailman lost it, but Mr. Taffer  _never_  loses anything. He didn’t send it and he promised but he lied about it. He lied and  _I hate him_.”

“He’s a-”

“Road pizza,” Nicole scowls.

“Lame,” Waverly adds.

Nicole rolls her eyes, wiping at her face, unable to fight the small smile on her face. “Your insults are lame.”

Waverly shrugs. “They made you laugh,” she says unapologetically. She looks down at the tape in her hand and reaches around Nicole, putting it on top of the stereo with the rest of the tapes they’ve already gone through today. She holds out her hand looks down at it expectantly.

“What’re you doing?” Nicole asks.

“I want to listen to Journey,” Waverly says.

“No, you don’t,” Nicole says. “You want to listen to Toto.”

Waverly sets her mouth into a thin line and lift an eyebrow slowly.

Nicole swallows hard and pulls her hand out of her pocket, dropping the tape into Waverly’s hand. She sits down on the couch and watches Waverly load the tape in, putting it on Side B, before she claims the other side of the couch and turns, her back against the arm of the couch.

Wynonna groans as she comes back into the room, wrinkling her nose. “I thought Journey was done?” She passes a cold can of Orange Crush to Nicole.

Waverly shrugs carelessly, stretching her feet into Nicole’s lap. “I wanted to listen to it.”

“What about Toto?”

Waverly looks at Nicole, a smile on her face. “Eh. They’re road pizza.”

“Road pizza,” Wynonna repeats. “Okay, noob.” She rolls her eyes at Nicole. “Why is she so  _lame_?”

“She’s okay,” Nicole says, smiling back.  _She’s the best_.


	8. nothing's gonna stop us now

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From the prompt: “This is without a doubt the stupidest plan you’ve ever had. Of course I’m in.”

**August, 1987**

Wynonna unrolls the large paper she’s holding, using the sugar container to hold down one side and the jellies to hold down the other. Nicole looks up from the  _Rolling Stone_  she’s reading and frowns, tipping her head to one side to try and read Wynonna’s handwriting.

“Does that say-”

“ _Wynonna’s Plan to Destroy the Yorks_ ,” Wynonna reads. “Totally. I’m going to  _ruin_  them.”

Nicole wrinkles her nose. “What happened?”

“Does something need to happen?” Wynonna asks.

“Well, no,” Nicole admits.

The Yorks had spent the summer trying to out-mow her, taking the lawns she couldn’t get to as one person. Waverly was good company - the  _best_  company - but she wasn’t all that helpful, laying out on whatever lawn Nicole was mowing in her bathing suit and Wayfarers. Nicole took out Gus’s flowers, Mr. LaPierre’s mailbox post, and almost ran the Snapper off the curb once when Waverly rolled onto her stomach.

While Nicole beat off the heat and Waverly’s _neon lights_ , the Yorks rode around in Champ’s truck, hauling their brand new lawn mower and shoddily-made signs they posted on the Jordan’s and Temple’s lawns.  _York and Brother Mowing_.

Nicole had snorted.  _York Brothers Mowing_  would have sounded better, but she wasn’t going to tell them that.

Wynonna nods sharply. “Exactamundo. They’re  _punks_  and I want them gone.” There’s a glint in her eyes that catches the neon lights in the window of The Patch and Nicole slides away a little bit, suddenly nervous. “They also took Doc’s bike apart piece by piece and laid them out so they spelled ‘U Sux’ on his driveway.”

“They did  _what_?” Nicole asks, leaning forward.

Wynonna nods. “I mean, they won’t admit it was them, but it was spelled exactly the same as when Kyle graffitied the side of the play structure at the park.”

Nicole scowls. She’d been meaning to talk to Sheriff Nedley about increasing his patrols around the park at night; she knows the Yorks and Champ - and sometimes, Jonas and his friends - hang out there and break things, or spray paint the playground structures. She’s not even sure if he’d listen to her; she’s just a kid. But it’s worth a shot.

“So I’m going to get them back,” Wynonna explains. “I’m thinking I’ll start with  _their_  bikes. And then maybe Champ’s truck. Champ could do with a reminder, you know? Rosita was telling me about a paint stripper she just got in at the garage. It eats paint like acid.”

“That  _might_  be illegal,” Nicole points out.

“And then,” Wynonna continues over her. “We’re going to take all the parts of their dumb, matching 1983 SE Racing Quadrangles and we’re going to spread them out all across Purgatory.”

Nicole snorts. “Oh, yeah?”

“The biggest scavenger hunt  _ever_ ,” Wynonna breathes out. “A wheel in a tree outside of the high school, another one tied to the front of Sheriff Nedley’s ride.”

Nicole winces. “Maybe not that.”

Wynonna narrows her eyes and nods slowly. “You’re right. It’ll be better if we tie to Champ’s truck. They’ll never even look there. Boneheads.”

“Airheads,” Nicole adds.

“Butt ugly.”

“Bunk.”

“Hosers.”

“Meatheads.”

Wynonna looks up hopefully. “So? You in?”

Nicole blinks a few times. “This is… This is without a doubt, the  _stupidest_  plan you’ve ever had.” She watches Wynonna’s shoulders start to drop and she thinks of the way Champ leers at Waverly; of the way the Yorks chased her off of Alderman street and made her Snapper’s engine flood; of the way they laugh at her in gym class when Coach Allenbach isn’t watching. “Of course I’m in!”

Wynonna grins widely. “Okay. We need a wrench set, some coveralls, and a passport.” She slaps a hand down on the table. “After this is over, we might need to move to Mexico.”

“Mexico?” Nicole asks, confused.

Wynonna nods. “Sure. Not the States, obviously. But definitely somewhere warm. And it’s about time you got a girlfriend again, right?”

Nicole swallows hard. “I, uh…” She shakes her head. “I don’t need a… girlfriend. Right now.”

Wynonna shrugs. “Maybe  _I_  do. Rosita went last summer and said the girls there are  _banging_.”

Nicole nearly knocks over her glass of Orange Crush. “The plan.”

Wynonna’s eyes light up. “The plan! Let’s get movin’, then. Time to ruin some days.”


	9. still i wonder, who'll stop the rain

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From the prompt: "I thought you were dead."

**August, 1984**

By the time someone finds her, the light afternoon rain has turned into a torrential downpour and the hot sun has become a distant memory.

“Who’ll Stop The Rain” has been playing on a long loop in her head.

_Maybe the drought is over_ , she thinks, watching the woods around her flood. Puddles stretch out as wide as Curtis is tall, taking up the whole path. She’s huddled under the platform of her secret hideout, watching the rain come down. She’s so focused on a puddle just off the path quickly expanding, that she doesn’t see the person storming towards her until leaves and dirt are flying into the air, bulleted back down to the ground by stinging raindrops.

“Nicole Marie Haught!” they shout over the rain.

_Waverly_ , Nicole thinks.  _Shit_.

Waverly’s eyes flash, anger burning hot through them as she marches forward through the rain. Her hands are clenched into fists and they’re pressed into her thigh.

_How are you so pretty_ , a voice in Nicole’s head asks. She feels her face flush. Waverly shouldn’t be this pretty, not when she’s  _this_  angry. But her eyes are bright and her lips are pulled back and her hair is half-up and half-down, her hairspray worn out by the rain.

“Where the  _hell_  have you been?” Waverly shouts.

“I needed to get away,” she whispers. The rain nearly swallows her words, drowning them out.

“You needed to get away?” Waverly repeats. She scoffs and rolls her eyes. “You needed to-”

Lightning flashes above her and Nicole presses back against the tree. Waverly looks over her shoulder at the rain coming down around them and moves closer to Nicole, their bodies against the tree bark, under the shelter of the rotting platform above them. Nicole leans heavily into Waverly, her shaking hands hovering over Waverly’s shoulder.

“I’m still mad,” Waverly grumbles. Her side presses into Nicole’s arm. “I don’t know  _what_  you were thinking, running off like that.”

“I’m sorry,” Nicole says.

Waverly talks over her. “I thought you were dead!”

Nicole winces. “I’m not,” she says uselessly.

“No note. Your bike, missing,” Waverly rants. “All of the tapes in your mom’s living room were on the floor. Nathan said you pulled a Linda Blair and threw a bucket of pig’s blood on him.”

“That’s two different movies,” Nicole points out. Her mouth snaps closed when Waverly’s eyes cut towards her. She nods for Waverly to continue.

“Wynonna and Doc went towards the park and the school. I  _knew_  you’d come here,” Waverly says. “And then I saw your bike at the trailhead and…” She trails off and the space her words fill with John Fogerty’s voice.

“ _Long as I remember the rain been coming down. Clouds of myst'ry pouring confusion on the ground_.”

Nicole winces again. Her tires were getting stuck in the growing mud and she’d dropped her bike at the top of the trail, running the rest of the way into the woods. She looks a little closer, noticing that the anger in Waverly’s eyes isn’t really anger; it’s  _fear_. She feels something in her stomach shift and through the rain, she can hear the start of a Van Halen song. Her hand slides down Waverly’s arm, their fingers locking loosely as Nicole’s palm settles against Waverly’s.

“I just got mad,” she whispers.

“You can’t  _do_  that,” Waverly says. She sounds different, like she’s lost her voice in the cold. “I got…” She takes a deep breath. “No one knew where you were.”

“I’m sorry,” Nicole says, still whispering. Waverly leans closer to hear her over the rain. “I’m sorry,” she repeats. “But he called and-”

Waverly reaches up, her thumb against Nicole’s cheek as she wipes away a tear. “He’s not worth it,” she says softly.

“He’s my  _dad_.”

“He’s not worth it,” Waverly repeats, her words firm. “Whatever he did. Whatever he said. It’s  _wrong_. He’s not worth it.”

Nicole opens her mouth to argue but Waverly narrows her eyes and Nicole closes her mouth instead. She nods wordlessly and leans into Waverly’s hand.

“We should go,” Waverly says quietly.

Nicole shakes her head, watching the rain come down in sharp sheets. “In a minute?”

Waverly looks like she’s going to argue, but her eyes roam Nicole’s face for a moment before she nods slowly. “Okay,” she agrees. “In a minute.”

Nicole squeezes Waverly’s hand and stares out into the rain, the conversation with her dad fading from her mind as easily as Waverly’s thumb dusts across Nicole’s knuckles.  

“ _Still the rain kept pouring, falling on my ears. And I wonder, still I wonder who’ll stop the rain_.”


	10. and she was

****

**Spring, 1985**

Nathan has a baseball game and he needs her to play. He didn’t want to ask; he hemmed and hawed his way through it and only actually managed the words after Perry elbows him in the side.

Nicole says yes so fast - faster than the Tobisha Jeremy got her can get to the end of the tape. She has the  _perfect_  shirt in mind and Waverly hasn’t bedazzled  _all_  her hats, yet.

Nathan rolls his eyes. “I only need you to stand in the outfield, okay Bad News Bear?”

And she does - only stand in the outfield that. But Wynonna comes and  _Waverly_ comesand they cheer for her and throw peanuts into the field when the pitcher on the other team walks her intentionally all three times she gets up to bat.

A ball comes out her way in the bottom of the seventh and she hears Waverly screaming her name - she screams the way Wynonna screamed when they found a  _Bad Company, Live From Maple Leaf Garden_  bootleg tape in an old box in the apartment above the Patch. The ball doesn’t land in her secondhand glove; it hits her in the cheek instead, pain bursting across her face so fast that one minute she’s looking at Waverly and the next, she’s staring at a cloud that looks like a soup can.

Nathan takes her out of the game - he kicks second base and curses and the umpire, one of Champ Hardy’s friend - tells him to cool off and get her an ice pack. Nathan sends her home instead, and she makes it, leaning heavily on Waverly and Wynonna. They walk with her, one on each side, and they get milkshakes at The Patch and Waverly presses a slice of hamburger patty against her face. She’s close, close enough that Nicole can see the flecks of green in her eyes and when Wynonna asks her who the Prime Minister is, she can’t answer.

But years later, when Hayley pulls an old secondhand glove out of Nathan’s toolshed, Nicole remembers each and everyone moment of the afternoon; she remembers the flecks of green in Waverly’s eyes and this time, when Waverly gets close enough, Nicole kisses her.


	11. these are the day that you'll remember

****

**Fall, 1992**

They steal Gus’s Polaroid camera - the one she very clearly told them to never,  _ever_  touch - and take a ride across town to Cal’s Corner. Wynonna spends a few quarters making prank calls to Champ Hardy’s house, then to the Yorks, while Nicole uses a handkerchief she borrowed from Nathan’s room to clean a scuff mark off the top of her boot.

“Is your refrigerator running?” Wynonna asks, already laughing. She waits a moment for Pete to say something before screaming into the receiver. “Then you better go catch it!”

She slams the receiver down into the cradle, still laughing as she kicks the booth door closed. Nicole winces at the sound, her fingernail digging into the soft leather of her boot for a moment. She hisses, rubbing furiously at it.

“Aren’t we a little old to make prank calls?” she asks.  _Isn’t it a little bit illegal?_

“Aren’t we a little old to make prank calls?” Wynonna mocks. “We’re  _never_  too old. We’ll be 90 and sneaking behind the nurses’s backs in a nursing home, making prank calls. I’ll never let those Yorks rest, you hear me?” She snaps her gum loudly.

Nicole rolls her eyes. “I hear you.” 

She hesitates for a minute, a question on the tip of her tongue. It’s been there ever since Wynonna came roaring back into town, claiming she missed a little bit of home. Nicole knows that’s not the truth; she knows something happened out on the road - the Banditos were mentioned in a small blurb on the CPIC update this week - but Wynonna hasn’t said.

Nicole doesn’t want to push. She’s just glad Wynonna is home. So she swallows back the question and points at the Polaroid on the hood of her Bonneville. “What’re we doing with that?”

Wynonna grins. “Making memories, Five-O.” She holds it up to her eye, mouth twisted in concentration. The shutter  _snaps_  and Nicole frowns. “There. Now everyone will have photographic evidence that you’re a total noob.”

Nicole rolls her eyes. “Gimme that,” she demands, grabbing it out of Wynonna’s hands. The picture is still processing, the photograph spitting out of the exit slot. She holds it up when it’s finally out, watching the picture form.

“You’re supposed to-”

“You’re not supposed to shake it,” Nicole says over Wynonna. “Waverly said so.”

“Waverly said so,” Wynonna mocks. “God, you two are gross.”

“Sorry,” Nicole says. “I can’t hear you over the sound of you whispering into the phone how much you  _love_  Doc.”

Wynonna’s mouth drops open. “That was a  _private_  conversation. I’m reporting you for invasion of piracy.”

“Privacy,” Nicole corrects. “And if that’s the case, I should have spent our whole lives reporting you for invading my privacy.” She drops the picture in her hand onto the hood of her car and holds the camera up to her eye, aiming it in Wynonna’s direction. “Okay. Your turn.”

Wynonna pulls her sunglasses out of her hair and settles them on the bridge of her nose, shrugging her jean jacket off her shoulders and lifting a hand up. She makes a finger gun, points it in Nicole’s direction, and blows a bubble with the piece of gum in her mouth.

Nicole lets the picture develop and when Wynonna takes the next ride out of town, she slides it into the visor of her Bonneville, next to the picture of Waverly, and counts down the days until they’re both back and Purgatory doesn’t feel too lonely anymore. 


End file.
